Tomorrow we race
by NetRaptor
Summary: Shadow/Mekion has heard rumors that GUN has created a new weapon to destroy him. But when he tracks it down, it's a girl with augmented legs who can barely walk. He takes pity on her and begins teaching her to walk, then run ... even though GUN will force her to hunt him. Shadow only laughs and promises, "Tomorrow, we race."
1. Chapter 1

Shadow's body was half-robot, and GUN hated him for it.

His left arm, left leg, and the left side of his face were made of gleaming black metal. Shadow had taken to wearing a black body suit to hide most of it. He wore sunglasses and a jacket with a hood to conceal his disfigured face and glowing red eye.

He stood on a rain-washed street in Sapphire City early in the morning, hands in his pockets. Across the street was a research hospital with an empty parking lot. Inside that building was the weapon that GUN had built to destroy him.

Once, Shadow too had been a secret experiment, created by government contractors in their quest to create the ultimate life form. But the project had been shut down and he had barely escaped with his life. GUN had hunted him ever since. His robotic upgrades had only made him stronger, and they feared him even more. For a while, Shadow had agreed to work with them, trading his service for their generosity in not throwing him in prison. But a glimpse of his future, courtesy of Mephiles, had sent him into hiding.

He'd been spying on GUN for months, tracking any mention of his name. That was how he discovered a top secret project to create more creatures like himself - powerful, augmented Mobians who would destroy him at their masters' command.

Shadow had come to destroy their first creation before it had the chance to hunt him.

He waited and watched for an hour, staying out of the rising sun, lurking in the shadows. He could afford to be patient—he had to be more cunning than his enemies. They would never expect him to boldly stake out one of their own hospitals.

His patience was finally rewarded as the hospital door swung open. Two female hedgehogs stepped out, one on crutches. Their voices carried across the street.

"Do you want me to come along?"

"No! I need to do it myself." This was the girl on crutches. Her fur was an odd pearly gray color. Shadow couldn't guess her age.

She swung carefully across the parking lot on her crutches. Her legs bent beneath her, only touching the ground with the tip of one toe.

Shadow zoomed in with his robot eye.

The girl's legs were smooth, mechanical constructs, white with black trim. They didn't seem to work very well. She only extended the right one. The left leg remained curled at the knee, the foot bent at an awkward angle.

Was she the weapon meant to take him down? She could barely walk. Maybe this was some kind of trap, and the real weapon would be watching to see if he intercepted her.

Shadow followed her from the other side of the street, pretending to stare at a smartphone. After one glance, the girl paid no attention to him. She focused on walking along on her crutches.

She was trying to work her legs, Shadow observed. Each step, she struggled to extend them, bend the knees, force the hip joints to work. It reminded him sharply of his own physical therapy after receiving his own upgrades. Here was someone else living out that same nightmare, day by day.

By the time the girl reached the end of the block and collapsed onto a bus stop bench, Shadow was intrigued. How did GUN think such a pathetic girl could ever be a threat to him? His scans picked up no other augmented life forms for a mile.

She gazed at him defiantly as he approached. "What do you want?"

"Hi." He stood there, language draining from his brain.

She braced her mechanical legs awkwardly against the concrete, the knees in and the feet out. She glared at him, as if expecting him to make fun of her.

Slowly Shadow pushed back his hood and pulled off his sunglasses, revealing his robot eye.

The girl gasped and covered her mouth, but not in fear—more like in sympathetic recognition.

"I'm augmented, too," he said quietly. "I thought ... maybe you'd like some company."

The girl stared at him for a long moment. Her gaze roamed across his body, trying to guess how much of him was mechanical. She didn't seem to recognize him, which was good. Maybe they hadn't trained her to hunt him yet.

He held out his left hand. "My arm and leg."

The girl touched one of his metal fingers. A smile grew on her face. "Mine is my legs, pelvis and spine. They said I'd be able to run fast." She slapped one of her legs. "Do I look like a champion sprinter to you?"

He sat beside her. "I'm Shadow."

"I'm Dina." They shook hands.

"I'm not supposed to talk to anyone," Dina said, fingering the handle of her nearest crutch. "It's not like anybody wants to, anyway. 'Mommy, what's wrong with her? Why don't her legs work? She's scaring me, Mommy.'"

This frank admission pierced Shadow's heart like a shard of glass. He swallowed a sudden, unwelcome lump in his throat. "It wasn't easy for me, either. How long has it been? Since your augmentation?"

"Two months," Dina replied. "The nerves are still reconnecting. It's why I can't move this one." She whacked her left leg with a crutch.

"I don't even know how long it took me," Shadow admitted. "Months, probably. It felt like ages. And it hurt."

"Oh yes!" Dina agreed. "Some nights the pain still keeps me awake! My spine, you know."

They talked for a long time. With every word, Shadow admired her more. Dina's courage and fire warmed him, and her suffering had been so similar to his own. She had been in a terrible car accident that had left her paralyzed and near death. They'd asked her if she would agree to a secret program that might allow her to walk again, and she agreed.

"Jury's still out, though," Dina said, levering herself to her feet. "I mean, these legs don't even work right."

Shadow jumped to his feet and stood by in case she needed help. "Well, there's really only one way to make that happen. Let's go to the park. It's this way."

"Then what?" Dina said, giving him a suspicious look.

He grinned. "We'll run races."

"Races," she said flatly. "Shadow, my legs don't work!"

"So?" he said, giving her a mischievous grin. "That means you'll be easy to beat."

Dina stared at him for a moment, then grinned. "You're on. And when I win, you're not allowed to cry like a sissy."

They walked two blocks to a nearby park, Shadow pacing along sedately and Dina laboring on her crutches.

As they walked, he carried on a silent conversation with Maria, the AI he carried inside the robot half of his brain. "What do you think of her?"

Maria appeared on his internal screen, a blond-haired human in a blue and white dress. She crossed her arms. "Do you think this is wise? She's probably the weapon created to kill you. And you're going to help her get stronger?"

"I like her," Shadow replied. A vast, warm feeling filled him that he didn't understand and couldn't explain. He'd barely known the girl for two hours, but it was balm to his soul to meet someone who he identified with so deeply. He knew nobody else who had been drastically altered, chemically and mechanically.

"You have a crush," Maria observed.

Shadow mentally shrugged. "Would you rather I killed her now? As Mecha asked me, which is better? Justice or mercy?"

Maria looked troubled. "I don't know."

"Let me try mercy first," Shadow said. "If things go wrong, then I'll side with justice."

The hedgehogs reached the park, a wide grassy meadow studded with mature shade trees. Dina was trembling and panting, so Shadow helped her sit on the grass. Or tried to.

Dina refused his help. "I have to do this myself," she gasped.

Her shifting weight forced her robotic knees to buckle. She lay on the grass, her legs twisted awkwardly to one side.

"Uh," Shadow said, "need a hand?"

"No!" Dina snarled. "I need a leg!" She struggled fiercely. One leg uncurled suddenly and kicked Shadow in the stomach. He doubled up, the wind knocked out of him.

"I'm sorry!" Dina exclaimed. "It's these dumb nerves!"

Shadow was choking and laughing at the same time. He sat on the grass until he caught his breath, still laughing.

Meanwhile, Dana rolled and struggled until she straightened her legs out at last. Both of them did respond to her will, Shadow was pleased to see. But they were sluggish and unpredictable. Finally, Dina reached a sitting position and sat there, panting. She pushed back her pearly gray quills and tried to compose herself.

"We're still going to race," Shadow said.

She shook her head. "Come on. I'm so tired already. I can't stand one more minute on those crutches. They hurt my arms."

He pointed at her with his robot hand. "We're going to crawl."

"Crawl!" Dina exclaimed, then laughed. "What are you, my therapist?"

A short while later, Shadow was teaching Dina to crawl. She was surprised to find that her legs actually obeyed her a little easier. But she also spent a lot of time face-down in the grass.

"I did this on a concrete floor," Shadow said, sitting nearby and waiting for her to recover. "They wanted me to be tough."

Dana propped herself up on her elbows, wincing as her spine creaked. "At least you didn't get grass in your mouth."

She managed to crawl a few more feet, then collapsed again. Her clothes were soaked with sweat from the effort. Shadow knew exactly how that felt.

"That's enough," he told her. "We'll do it again tomorrow."

Dina stared at him, her cheek pressed into the grass. "Are you serious?"

He nodded. "And don't tell anyone about me."

She pushed herself into a somewhat-sitting position and gazed at him, eyes narrowed. "Why? Are you dangerous?"

He rolled his eyes. "Anybody with augmentation is considered dangerous. I'm dangerous. You're dangerous."

"Ha," she said hollowly, but she gazed at her legs for a moment with a sober expression, as if considering what their existence really meant.

Shadow held out a hand. "Tomorrow, we'll race."

He said it every day for the rest of the summer.


	2. Chapter 2: The penny drops

Dina bravely endured her physical therapy with the doctors, and then went for her daily walk to the park on her crutches. True to her word, she told no one about the dark, handsome stranger with the glowing robot eye. She marveled at the fluid way he moved his robot limbs, as if they were as part of him as his bones and muscles. But his robot hand amazed her the most. She watched the delicate movements as he picked a handful of clover and sorted through them, looking for one with four leaves. He must have been changed years ago if he was this comfortable with his augmentation.

It gave her a goal to strive for. While before she had often been too tired to do the activities her therapist prescribed for her, now she threw herself into them. She had to beat Shadow at a race. If he had struggled through the same tedious, painful exercises, then so could she.

As the hot, green summer turned to fall, Dana began to walk short stretches without her crutches. She couldn't run yet, but she could now leave her crutches on the grass and walk around the park with Shadow. They shuffled through fallen leaves and watched geese flying south in long Vs.

"They say I'll be out of therapy by the end of the year," Dina said. "I guess I'll be going home." She wanted to ask if Shadow would still be there, but couldn't quite bring herself to. She had valiantly resisted crushing on him, but his gentle, steadfast presence every day had made that inevitable. He was so kind, and knew exactly what she was experiencing. She tried not to think about why someone had changed him in such a way, just as she tried not to think about why the government had been so generous as to give her new legs.

He ducked his head. "I guess your family wouldn't want somebody like me hanging around."

"I live alone," Dina assured him. "Just me and a houseplant in a tiny apartment. If anybody remembered to pay my rent, that is."

"Oh." His expression lightened. "Well, us cyborgs have to stick together. Let me know when they're going to release you." He took her hand in his robot hand, smiling. His touch was light and delicate, like a living hand.

"So," she ventured, "are we ... dating?"

Shadow shrugged. "I don't know. It depends. You're the first girl who ever gave me the time of day. I'm not exactly friendly-looking." He scowled at her with his robot eye, turning instantly into a ferocious monster.

Dina grinned. "Well, not many guys are going to want a girl with robot legs. And you don't scare me."

He squeezed her hand a little. "Thanks."

* * *

That day, when Dina returned to the hospital, two humans in uniforms waited for her.

"Dina Marsden?" one of them said, stepping forward. "I'm with GUN. We would like to speak to you."

Looking hesitantly at her doctor, Dina followed the men into an exam room. Her doctor looked resigned, as if she knew something she'd never told Dina and now the truth was coming out.

One of the men offered Dina a seat.

"No thanks," she said. "Sitting for too long hurts my back." She didn't want to show weakness by sitting in the presence of these imposing people.

"All right," said one of the men. "You may have been told that robotic implants were the only way you would ever walk again. That is not true."

Dina stood very still. Her spine felt more rigid than usual and her legs conveyed a sense of growing cold.

The man went on, "You have been augmented with experimental military technology. You are designed to run faster than a cheetah, faster than many land vehicles. Your goal is to hunt down rogue cyborgs who have violated their contracts. This is the main one." He handed her a photo.

Shadow gazed at her from the photo, his red robot eye glowing.

Dina's heart turned to a ball of ice in her chest.

"Shadow the hedgehog," the man said. "An ex-GUN experiment gone wrong. He received black market robot parts at one time and is even more dangerous than before." He paused to let that sink in.

Dina hoped her face didn't show the shock she felt. She silently handed the photo back.

The man continued, "Your doctor assured us that you have been working hard and improving rapidly. From now on, you will learn to run and fight. You must be capable of dealing with Shadow when you locate him."

Vividly Dina recalled the gentle touch of his robot hand, his smile, the way he had encouraged her all summer long.

 _Tomorrow, we race._

"I'll try, sir," she said, forcing a smile. "I didn't know I was going to become an assassin."

"Your mission is to hunt and capture," the man said. "We will determine whether to terminate the target afterward."

Terminate the target. Dina imagined Shadow in handcuffs, head bowed and spines drooping, as a soldier held a gun to the back of his head.

"Yes sir," she said. "I'll do my best."

They produced paperwork for her to sign. Dina filled it out with a growing sense of selling her soul to the devil. They promised to pay all her medical bills, including the bills accrued by her further training, as long as she did everything they asked for the next seven years. She signed each paper with sickness rising in her.

That afternoon, she went out to the park, as usual. This was so routine by now that the hospital staff didn't bat an eye. Her doctor encouraged it, because Dina was exercising on her own. GUN certainly didn't seem to care.

Shadow unfolded himself from the shadows beneath a cedar and came to greet her, dressed in his usual bodysuit and hood. "How are you today?" he asked, as he did every day.

Dina had carried her crutches most of the way. She threw them in the grass and burst into tears. "I hate GUN!"

Shadow looked startled. He stepped up to her and took her hand. "What happened? Did they hurt you?"

"I signed papers today," Dina sobbed. "I have to do the government's dirty work for seven years. They want me to capture you for them." She clutched his hand, blinking at him through her tears. "You have to run away! Go hide where I'll never find you!"

The black hedgehog gazed at her with a strange expression. It was like he'd never seen anything as extraordinary as a crying girl before. He reached up and dried her tears with the back of his living hand. "Shh. Calm down."

Dina gulped her sobs. The tears of rage and shame still stormed inside her. The specter of GUN and their power loomed over her, forcing her to do any number of horrible things.

Shadow smiled - that stiff smile that was all he could manage, since the left side of his jaw was mechanical. "You really think you could catch me?"

Dina stared at him. "Look at me. Once I'm trained, I'll be able to run down Sonic himself."

Shadow gazed at her for a long moment, as if holding some inner debate with himself. He nodded to himself. "All right. Let's race." He held her hand. "I'll help you."

"No!" Dina cried. "You can't teach me to - to run like you!"

"I don't run," Shadow said, pointing at his strange red and white shoes. "I skate." He set out at an easy pace, tugging her along with him.

Dina forced her legs to move. To her surprise, they took long, flowing strides, increasing her speed easily. She stayed alongside Shadow as he skated on hover skates. Their speed astonished her.

"Practice," he told her. "Run a few miles every day. The augmentation only enhances your natural strength. As you grow stronger, so will your robotic limbs."

"But I'll hurt you," she protested.

Shadow shot her a grin. "You'll never catch me."

* * *

That evening, as Dina returned to the hospital, Shadow sat on a park bench, gazing at his interlaced fingers. Five fingers of flesh, five fingers of metal.

"Maria," he thought, "I don't know what to do."

"You always knew she was a weapon," Maria whispered in his mind.

"I've been a fool," Shadow thought, lifting his head to gaze at the trees. "But it's not her fault she's a weapon. Did you see the way she cried?"

"She will cry as she takes your life," Maria replied. "She must obey her masters much as you obey Mecha."

Shadow jumped up and paced around the park. Fortunately for him, Mecha thought of him as a friend and never issued commands anymore. But GUN would wield Dina like a sword and discard her when she no longer suited their purposes. It wasn't fair that such a sweet soul, who had suffered so much, was being pressed into the mold of a soldier.

"What is justice, in this case?" Shadow thought. "And what is mercy? She'll try to capture and kill me, Maria. I should strike now, before she's trained."

"Is Dina truly your enemy?" Maria said thoughtfully.

Shadow halted, one hand on a tree trunk. "No. GUN is."

"Then act accordingly."

Shadow dug his metal claws into the tree's bark, the frustration seeping out of him. "Yes. I think … I have an idea."

* * *

That night, Shadow was spotted miles away, at a GUN installation far up the coast. He broke into an army base, showed himself to the guards and video cameras, and disappeared into the darkness.

When Dina arrived at the park the following afternoon, she was pale and biting her lower lip.

"What did you do?" she hissed as Shadow greeted her. She dropped her crutches and stomped up to him, moving nimbly on her artificial legs.

Shadow couldn't control his grin. It spread across his face. She moved so well now, without thinking about it, completely different from her condition at the beginning of summer. His heart soared.

"You were seen!" Dina exclaimed, grabbing his robot arm through the fabric of his jacket. "What possessed you to attack an army base?"

"It was closer than the nearest airbase," he replied. "I didn't harm anyone. I just gave them a good look at me."

"They want to send me on a trial run against you!" Dina whispered, her eyes filling with tears. "Tonight! And they've got a Global Positioning System built into my spine. They're tracking me right now, even."

Shadow scanned the park, the trees, the green lawns. There could be cameras hidden anywhere. But he had been here every day for three months and nobody had caught on. Possibly they were content to track Dina remotely with no idea that the monster they sought was with her.

"Let's walk, like usual," he said. "They'll notice if we change the routine."

They set off at a fast walk around the park, following the paths as they always did. Dina sniffed and wiped her eyes. "I can't believe this. Why did you have to come here and make friends with me? And now I'm a danger to you!"

Shadow shrugged. "I heard they were building a weapon to destroy me. I came to ... to see what it was. And it was you."

"You knew?" Dina screamed in a whisper. "You knew, and you still helped me get stronger? Why?"

"Well, because ..." Shadow floundered. _Because you reminded me of me? Because I couldn't stand to watch you suffer? Because you're a girl being put through the same torture I went through, and it hurt me to watch?_

"Because you needed my help," he finished.

"I would have learned to walk without you," Dina said, watching her feet as they strode along. "And run. And even ... even to hunt, I suppose. Then it wouldn't have been so personal."

"Do you know what would have happened?" Shadow said, halting suddenly. "If you randomly came after me?"

She halted, too, gazing at him with a troubled expression, wrapping her arms around herself. "What?"

"GUN has destroyed my life," he said, very quietly. "They killed my sister when they shut down the lab where I grew up. They've hounded me ever since, except for when I did some mercenary work for them. But they stabbed me in the back. So ... imagine I'm out in the wild somewhere. I see this half-robot person coming after me. What do you think I'd do?"

Dina bit her lip and looked away. "You'd ... probably kill that person."

Shadow nodded. "It would be self-defense. Look at me. I was trained to fight and kill. Would you rather I had waited and let that happen?"

"N-no." Dina's gaze lingered on his robot eye. "I just ... I don't know what to do. I have to do what they want."

"You do?" Shadow said, raising his only eyebrow. "What will they do if you run?"

"They can track me, Shadow," Dina exclaimed, pacing in a circle. "And I signed a contract. They'll pay my medical bills, no questions asked, but I have to do these missions."

"So what?" Shadow said. "I can help you escape the human colonies. What will they do to you then?"

Dina stared at him, eyes glittering with hope. Then she lowered her head again. "Do you think they'd let me go that easily?"

"No, I don't," Shadow replied. "Don't worry, you won't catch me tonight. But try to find out the consequences of failure." He took her hand with a smile. "Tonight, we race."


	3. Chapter 3: Contemplating murder

As the sun sank that evening, the doctor retrieved Dina from her room and took her downstairs, where the government agents had set up a command center in an empty exam room.

"Here's our prodigy now," said one of the agents. "Now. Shadow was last seen near our army base. We're going to drop you a mile away and let you sweep the area. He's notoriously hard to catch, so we're outfitting you with certain gear."

He gestured to a table covered in headsets, night vision goggles, firearms, and other gadgets Dina couldn't identify.

"What if I fail?" she asked, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice.

"Return to the drop vehicle at sunrise," the agent said. "There's no penalty for failure, Miss Marsden."

Dina twisted her fingers together. "That's good, because I don't know how good I'll be. I haven't even completed training."

"We don't expect you to catch him tonight," the agent replied with a hint of irritation. "This is part of your training."

"What happens if ..." She groped wildly for a plausible scenario. "What if I start chasing him, and he leaves the country or something?"

The agent gazed at her. "If you are indeed in pursuit, then we will support you any way we can. But if you're deserting, well." He smiled, showing whitened teeth. "There is a small explosive charge built into your spine. When activated, it will leave you crippled. Maybe even dead. You wouldn't want that to happen."

Dina swallowed. "No, no, I guess not." The nerves in her back tingled as she imagined what that might feel like. Where was the charge? Could she cut it out?

They equipped her with infrared goggles, a headset with a range of two miles, and a set of tranquilizer darts in small tubes on her wrists. If she caught Shadow, she was to incapacitate him and avoid combat if possible.

Sick at heart and very nervous, she climbed into a black van and rode to her drop point.

It was a hilly countryside with a wood off to the south. The rest of the area was open grassland where cattle grazed. Through her infrared goggles, the countryside looked bright as day, with an intense glow to the east, where the army base lay.

"Patrol the area, report in every ten minutes," the agent told her. This was Agent L, who would be her dispatch. He was a younger man in a black bodysuit like Shadow's. He looked at her dubiously as she climbed out of the van. "Don't hurt yourself and make me come find you in the dark."

"I'll be careful," she promised, and strode away into the night.

The nerves her body had been integrating into the legs, which made them feel like her own. She felt the cool air and the hard ground underfoot, but not the grass against her shins. Marvelous though they were, her legs would never be as sensitive as living flesh. But they were better than no legs at all. After the car accident, she had stared at her amputated legs and cried.

She ran through the night, circling through the woods and meadows, rejoicing in her freedom. Of course, Shadow was nowhere near this area. There was no question of stumbling across him and having to report in.

Dina stopped to rest on a hilltop, gazing at the gleaming sea in the distance. "Taking a breather, L," she said into her headset.

"Roger that," he replied.

As she stood there, filling her lungs with the clean, dew-scented air, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. A black hedgehog waved to her from the cover of a nearby tree.

Dina yanked off her headset and switched off the power. Then she hurried to Shadow, who leaned against a tree trunk as if he hadn't a care in the world.

"What're you doing here?" she whispered.

He shrugged in his infuriating way. "I came to race."

Slapping him in the face or kissing him seemed like equally good ideas at the moment. Dina stared at him, mouth open. "They gave me tranquilizers to shoot you with."

"Oh really?" Shadow examined the air guns on her wrists. "Nice. I need one of these. Tell you what. Take your best shot during the race. If I lose, I lose."

Dina gaped. "But ... they'll catch you!"

Shadow opened one of her air guns, pulled out a dart, looked at it, and put it back. "It's three milligrams of amobianzine. If they think that'll take me down, they're dreaming."

Dina blinked at him for a long moment. They'd told her that the tranquilizer acted immediately and would produce unconsciousness within minutes. If the drug wouldn't affect him, he must have far more augmentation below the surface than she had assumed. Maybe it was the black market parts the agents had referred to. "Are you even a hedgehog anymore? What are you?"

He touched her nose. "I'm still a hedgehog, Dina. But not all my augmentation was structural. Now. Race you!" He took off across the meadow, leaving Dina gaping after him.

She forced her feet to move as she fumbled her headset back on. "Agent L, I have contact. In pursuit."

"No way!" Agent L exclaimed. "I mean ... copy that. You've made a positive ID?"

"Definitely Shadow," Dina said. Her body moved faster and faster, legs pumping, heart surging. Shadow still pulled away, visible in her goggles only as a flicker of light from his hover skates.

Dina pushed herself harder. She'd never truly raced Shadow before, never pushed her body to its limits.

They descended a long hillside and climbed another. To her astonishment, Dina narrowed the gap between them on the uphill climb. Shadow grinned at her over his shoulder, his red eye flashing white in her goggles.

As they crested the hill, Dina put on a final burst of speed.

Something snapped in her right knee.

She fell with a cry, rolled through the dry grass, and finally flopped on her back, staring at the stars. Muted pain flowed through her knee.

Shadow appeared above her, bending down in concern. "What happened?"

"I ruined my knee," she panted. "I felt it give."

He swore and shook his head admiringly. "You almost had me, you know. That was a good run."

"Go away, quick," she whispered. "I have to tell them what happened."

He stroked her face gently with his living hand. It was warm. She caught his hand with both of hers and held it to her cheek. How could she hunt this hedgehog who had been so kind to her? It wasn't fair.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he whispered. "At the park, like usual."

She nodded and let him go. He grinned at her, then ran off toward the woods.

Dina sat up and tried to stand, but her knee buckled. "L, my knee malfunctioned and I lost him."

"I knew it was too good to be true," L muttered. "You really weren't ready."

"I know," she sighed. "I'm about a mile from your position."

"Copy that. I've got your tracker on radar."

After a while, the van came bumping over the meadow, headlights blazing. Agent L parked, jumped out, and helped her hobble inside. Dina strapped herself in with a sense of shame. She'd failed everyone tonight, both GUN and Shadow.

But GUN didn't see it that way. The agents at the hospital were ridiculously pleased that she had encountered Shadow on her very first run, and nearly caught him, too.

"So, he's hanging around that army base," the head agent mused. "What's he playing at?"

The doctors and engineers examined Dina's knee and discovered that she had broken a synthetic tendon. They immediately took her to surgery to fix it. However, surgery on a robotic limb wasn't like the usual kind. Dina was able to sit up in bed and watch TV with only local anesthesia while they took her leg apart and fixed it.

She replayed the moment in the meadow over and over - that tenderness Shadow had shown as he caressed her cheek. It was precious and secret, and she hugged the memory to herself. No, she'd never give him to GUN.

* * *

Shadow sat on the roof of the hospital, wrapped in his jacket, gazing across the sleeping city. "Maria, I need you to access the GUN network. Who's responsible for Dina's project?"

"Analyzing access points," Maria replied, appearing on his internal screen. "More justice to be dealt?"

"Yes," he replied. "I need to know who my true enemies are. If I can cut off the head of the snake, the rest of it will die."

The AI was silent for a while. Shadow dozed, head resting against an air conditioning unit. It would be so much better if Dina was in his arms right now. His existence had been solitary for so many years, and at last he had found his match. He would free her from her masters, sneak her to freedom, show her life and opportunity and love.

Love! Could he love a girl the way she needed him to? Could he be kind to her when she was cranky and her limbs hurt her? Or when he was out of sorts, himself? He pondered this, envisioning life with a companion at his side. He had already experienced this with Nox, his chao, a friendly, cheerful presence who always understood his moods. Maybe, with time, Dina could, too.

Deep in his heart lurked a black fear - the fear of losing her the way he had Maria - the real Maria. If GUN killed Dina, too, after he had let himself love again, it would destroy him. He had it in himself to rampage across the world, killing and destroying without remorse or pity. If he failed to save her, then that awful future awaited him, with a long, slow death in a cryo chamber as they siphoned away his energy.

He needed Dina. He had let his heart become wrapped up with her, which he probably shouldn't have done. He would even let her capture him if it meant saving her life.

Maria interrupted his thoughts. "Partial information retrieved with a ninety percent pertinence to your request."

"Tell me," Shadow replied.

"Dina is part of Project Apogee, an attempt to recreate Project Shadow. The primary benefactor is General Strathmore, who pushed to get the project approved by Congress. All reports go directly to him."

"Strathmore," Shadow muttered. "I should have known."

Strathmore was the soldier who had pulled the trigger on Maria. Now a general, he had worked to destroy Shadow, personally, for years. Here he was again, ruining Dina's life in an attempt to destroy Shadow once and for all.

"What is his location?" Shadow asked.

Maria hesitated. "Revenge cuts both ways, you know."

"It's not revenge," Shadow protested. "It's to save Dina."

"And you'd conveniently be avenging my original," said Maria.

Shadow didn't answer. He was thinking of the last time he'd met General Strathmore, how the man had been issuing orders to his soldiers to kill Shadow on sight, even though Shadow had been defending those same soldiers from a bigger threat.

"What's his location?" he repeated.

Maria gave a simulated sigh. "His office is in downtown Sapphire City, in the United Nations building."

Shadow rose to his feet, gazing across the city, sparkling with lights, to the skyscrapers in the distance. One of them held his oldest enemy, the one still working against him in such insidious ways.

"Tomorrow night," he murmured, "Strathmore will have an unfortunate accident."

* * *

Dina limped out to meet Shadow at the park that afternoon.

She refused to use crutches, but her leg was stiff from the new tendon. Walking was supposed to loosen it, but by the time she reached the park, it still felt like her knee was locked.

It was a windy, cloudy day. Leaves scurried over the grass in tiny whorls. Shadow waited for her beneath a towering sycamore, hands in his jacket pockets. His grim expression relaxed as Dina approached. "Hey. How're you feeling?"

"Not bad," she replied, limping up to him. "I snapped a tendon. They fixed it, but the new one is super stiff."

He nodded. "Let's walk, then."

They set out on their regular route, slower than usual. Shadow was quiet, a distant look in his living eye. Finally Dina asked, "What's wrong?"

He smiled a little. "Nothing's wrong, exactly. I've been doing a little digging."

Dina raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Do you know that you're part of Project Apogee?"

She remembered seeing the name somewhere. "I think so. It was on those papers they made me sign. It had to do with all these new parts they installed in me."

Without looking at her, he said, "Are you aware that it's an extension of Project Shadow?"

Dina halted. "You're kidding."

He faced her, too, taking her hand with his living hand. "You and I were created under the same banner. But Apogee is headed by General John Strathmore, a man who has wanted me dead for years. That's the only reason they saved you. To kill me."

Dina slowly nodded. "We've talked about this. You can still run away. I don't have to be your enemy if nobody ever sees you."

"Dina," he murmured, resting his robot hand on top of their joined hands, "you could never be my enemy. But Strathmore ... He's the one responsible for pitting you against me. He's the one I have to stop."

A new, deadly note entered his voice that she had never heard before. Dina gazed into his face and saw the cold-blooded cyborg that GUN feared so much.

"Are you going to kill him?" she whispered.

Shadow looked away and said nothing.

"Please don't," she whispered. "It's not worth it. We can run away, instead."

A little warmth returned to his expression. "We could. But what will they do to you?"

Dina sighed and released his hands. "I have a bomb in my spine."

"I knew it," Shadow muttered. "I knew they'd never let you get away. Did they say they'd take it out after your seven years of service?"

A sickening shiver passed through her middle. "No, they didn't."

"So," Shadow observed, "they either expect to keep you your whole life ... or they plan to terminate you."

Dina folded her arms tightly, again imagining what it would feel like to have an explosion in her back. Indentured servitude for the rest of her life … or maybe a random explosion when they felt she'd lost her usefulness.

"Let me see your spine," Shadow said. "Maybe I could take it out."

She turned her back and lifted her shirt. Shadow sucked in his breath through his teeth.

"What?" she exclaimed.

"Nothing," he replied. "These scars are ugly."

Dina hadn't ever looked at her back. Now she both wanted to and never wanted to.

Shadow trailed his fingers down her spine and stopped at her lower back. "There's something here, beneath the skin." He poked it. It felt cold and numb.

"It feels weird," Dina said.

"That's probably it." Shadow pulled her shirt down. "Before we escape, I'll need to remove that."

She faced him again, heart pounding. "Are we escaping?"

He nodded and they walked on. "Once I remove the general from the equation, we'll run for the southern border. Tonight."

Dina stared. "Tonight?"

"Yes." Shadow took her hand. "I can show you the world, Dina. I have resources and connections you can't imagine. I'll take good care of you."

Dina wanted to believe him, but he spoke so casually of murdering someone. "If I got in your way, would you kill me, too?"

"No!" he exclaimed. "I would never ..." He trailed off, seeing her expression. "You don't think Strathmore deserves death?"

"I think a lot of people do," Dina replied. "But it's not my place to give it to them. Or yours."

Shadow's expression hardened. Once more, he was the terrifying cyborg, honed for hunting and killing.

They completed their walk in silence. "I have to go," he told her.

"I know," she replied. "Shadow ..."

He had walked off a few paces, but paused and looked back at her.

Dina mustered her courage. "Tomorrow, we race."

He grinned. "Tomorrow."


	4. Chapter 4: Snared by the heart

John Strathmore laid down his pen and rubbed his eyes. A pile of paperwork still lurked on his desk, awaiting his review and signature. But it was past ten at night and he was tired. His secretary had gone home hours ago. The building was quiet and mostly empty, except for a security guard here and there.

Strathmore looked at the paper he had been reviewing. Updates on Project Apogee and the performance of the test subject. She had actually broken the legs, which his engineers had assured him was impossible to do.

Years ago, such progress would have pleased him. But Strathmore was a year from retirement and his enthusiasm for destroying Shadow had cooled. The monster kept to himself and hadn't harmed anyone in years. It was harder and harder to convince people in charge that the cyborg was a threat. He had started Project Apogee ten years ago, but he'd lost the drive to continue it. He'd pass the project to the younger guys who had begged for years to pitch the project to medical investors.

Footsteps in the hall outside - running footsteps. Strathmore straightened and rested one hand on the pistol in his belt.

The door burst open. A young female hedgehog burst in, her pearly quills in disarray, her white robotic limbs flashing in the light. The test subject, Dina Marsden. She skidded to a halt in front of his desk. "Get down!" she gasped. "Quick!"

Someone else was coming down the hall. Strathmore slid out of his chair and crouched behind the desk, pistol in hand.

Shadow the Hedgehog stepped inside, moving cautiously, like a hunting panther. He halted when he saw the girl.

"Dina!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"Stopping you," she said.

Strathmore tensed. His creation was protecting him, even though they'd never met. Why? He peered around the desk.

Shadow stood there in a fighting stance, his metal hand raised before him. Dina faced him, arms outstretched.

"He deserves what's coming to him," Shadow snarled. "Stand aside."

"No!" Dina cried. "You can't do this!"

Shadow's mismatched eyes met Strathmore's. "You killed Maria, you swine. You tried to kill me. And now you've created her to kill me for you."

Strathmore stood up, aiming his pistol at his enemy's forehead, over Dina's shoulder. "That's right, Shadow. Because you're an aberration who should have been put down years ago. But you know what?" He slowly laid his pistol on the desk. "I don't care anymore."

Shadow's stance softened in shock. Then he crouched a little. "This is a trick."

"It's no trick," Strathmore said. "Look at me. I'm turning seventy next year. You've kept your record disappointingly clean. I can't muster the energy to bother with you."

"But you made her!" Shadow exclaimed, pointing at Dina. "She's going to hunt me no matter where I go!"

Strathmore shrugged. "Maybe. Project Apogee was about creating her. The military can use her how they like. It's not up to me."

Dina stepped sideways and looked from the old man to the cyborg. "Wait. So you don't want Shadow dead?"

"I don't care about him either way," Strathmore replied. "You're a fine test subject, Dina. Thank you for intervening when you did."

Shadow growled and pointed at Strathmore. "You ruined my revenge, scum. I'll let you live out the rest of your pointless life. And you." He looked at Dina, dropping his attack stance entirely. He threw his arms wide. "Why must you side with GUN, after all they've done?"

"I couldn't let you murder him," Dina said, her voice choked. "I'd never be able to look you in the face again."

Shadow gazed at her in silence a moment. Then he gave a tiny shrug. "You've made your point." He spun on his heel and left the office.

Dina pulled out an empty chair and sat down, hands over her face.

Strathmore watched her cautiously. "Why did you do that?"

She looked up, tears glistening in her eyes. "Because I love him."

Strathmore wanted to laugh, and a sad, ironic laugh it would have been. "It's pointless to love a Shadow."

"It saved your life tonight," she said.

He sighed and sat in his desk chair. "That it did."

* * *

Dina returned to the hospital shortly before midnight, tired, her legs and back aching. She found doctors and agents everywhere, running from place to place and barking orders.

Agent L spotted her as she entered. "Here she is!" he shouted up the hall.

Everyone converged on her. "Where have you been?" the head agent exclaimed. "We've had a report that Shadow attacked General Strathmore himself! There's still time for you to catch Shadow if you run!"

That was how Dina found herself back on the road, streetlights flickering past, as she ran in pursuit of the hedgehog she most didn't want to see.

She found him walking down the street in his jacket, one more anonymous pedestrian. If she hadn't seen him every day for months, she would have passed him by. Instead, she ran straight to him. "Shadow!"

He looked up, his expression cold. "What do you want?"

"Run!" she screamed in a whisper. "They've sent me to track you, and they're right behind me in armored vehicles!"

Shadow stiffened, looking down the street toward the oncoming headlights. Then he ran like a frightened deer.

* * *

Shadow didn't want to deal with this right now. Shame roiled inside him: shame that Dina had been right. Killing Strathmore would have accomplished nothing. The man had ceased being Shadow's enemy, after all this time.

Beneath the shame, he was grateful to Dina for stopping him. Shadow had never actually killed anyone, saving that honor to bestow upon his worst enemy. Now, perhaps, he would never kill anyone, despite the high tech weapons built into his body.

For now, he had to escape. His trump card, an orange chaos emerald, nestled in a hip pocket. He could always teleport away if the pursuit got too hot. He only wanted to speak to Dina first. He had to get away for a while, let the hue and cry due down. Then he would return and quietly take her away, remove the explosive from her back, begin a new life far away with a beautiful companion at his side.

He swung around a light pole and dashed down a side street. Dina was right on his heels, as he had trained her. Time to take the chase where vehicles couldn't follow.

He swerved into an alley, leaped up a fire escape ladder, and climbed furiously.

"No fair!" Dina yelped behind him. "I don't even know if my legs will bend like that!"

"You could let me escape," he said over his shoulder. "Say it was too hard to climb a ladder."

She growled, jumped for the bottom rung of the ladder, and began climbing.

Shadow reached the fire escape and paused to watch her. Dina climbed well, but her newly-repaired leg didn't bend as easily as the other. He could leave her far behind, if he wanted.

Instead, he climbed to the roof and waited for her to catch up. After a few minutes, she did, breathing heavily. When she saw him standing there, she opened both hands. "Why are you still here? Run away!"

"I'm going to leave," he told her gently. "They have to believe that I've gone. Once things have calmed down, in a few months, I'll come back for you. You'll vanish, and far away, we'll begin a new life together."

Dina drew a deep breath. Her lower lip trembled. "That's probably the best plan," she whispered. "I can't escape on my own."

He pulled out the orange gem and held it out. It glowed like an ember in the darkness. Dina pressed both hands to her mouth. "You have a chaos emerald?"

"It allows me to teleport," he told her. "It's how I'll rescue you. But for now-"

Footsteps rang against the fire escape's metal. Voices shouted.

"Go!" Dina cried, waving her arms. "Hurry!"

Shame still burned inside him. He had to apologize before he left. "Dina, I..."

The first soldier reached the roof. He spotted the two cyborgs and raised his weapon.

Shadow looked at Dina in desperation. He opened his mouth to tell her to drop. She gave him the same look.

Then she raised both arms and shot him with every tranquilizer dart she carried.

Splinters of pain filled Shadow's chest. One dart stuck in his cheek. He frantically tugged them out, but a numbness spread from each point of contact. The math ran through his head. Three milligrams of tranquilizer could not overcome his healing nanites, but that had been eight darts. Twenty-four milligrams might stop his heart. At the very least, he was going down fast.

Dina jumped between him and the soldier. "I already got him! Hold your fire."

The world wavered and went dim. Shadow didn't collapse so much as float downward, light as a leaf, until his head hit the rooftop. It was comfortable there. So nice to lie down and rest. The chaos emerald rolled from his limp hand. Dina scooped it up and stuck it in her vest pocket.

His eyes slowly closed, and he fell asleep for a long, long time.

* * *

Dina's heart was sick. She accompanied the soldiers as they bound Shadow's arms and legs and conveyed him to the hospital. There they lashed him to a bed like a mental patient, and put him on a anesthetic drip to keep him unconscious.

The GUN agents praised Dina to the skies. They promised her money, accolades, further freedoms, anything they could think of.

Dina endured it, standing in a corner because sitting was uncomfortable. Mostly, she gazed at her sculpted plastic feet with the metal framing.

 _It would have been better if they'd let me die._

Her powerful, augmented body had enabled her to chase and capture Shadow. But had that been truly what had caused him to stop and wait for her? He'd had plenty of time to escape across the roof tops. Instead, he'd lingered there to tell her goodbye. He would have escaped if not for that.

 _I snared him by the heart._

Dina's guilt was like bottomless quicksand. She sank deeper and deeper into it as hours passed, then days. She had let herself love this dangerous, renegade cyborg, and he had returned her feelings. And look where it had gotten them. He was unconscious in a secure ward with GUN engineers crowing over him. She was petted and praised like an obedient dog.

How many more people like him would she have to hunt down?

Often she lurked in the hall outside his room, listening to the doctors and engineers talk. Shadow had been an incredible specimen before he had been augmented. He was composed of layers of technology, some robotic, some nanotech, some genetic. Specialists were being flown in to study him.

Finally, after Shadow had been contained for a week, Dina went to the head GUN agent. "Could I please see Shadow? I'm so curious about him."

The agent frowned at her for a long moment. "I suppose if you want to see him, it'd better be today. Let me check with the doctors."

They let her into the room that afternoon, when there was a lull between scientists' visits. Shadow was still strapped to the same bed, an IV dripping drugs into his living wrist. His black fur and metal stood out against the white sheets. They had stripped off his clothing, revealing his augmented body in all its dubious glory. Dina gazed at the white, scar-like line down his torso and stomach where metal met flesh. It zigzagged here and there, following the contours of bone and muscle. She gathered from the doctors' chatter that this line was composed of nanites that had stitched him together.

She took his limp metal hand. It was cold. "I'm so sorry," she whispered to his expressionless face. "You probably can't even hear me. But I did this to you, and I'm sorry."

His robot eye flickered on, the red pupil fixing on her face. Shadow's lips moved in the faintest of whispers. "I'm sorry, too."

Dina glanced at the IV. "How are you awake?" she whispered. "They've got you on enough morphine to kill a horse."

"Shadow is asleep," he whispered. "I am the AI in his robot half."

Dina found herself facing the weirdness of the Mecha-fusion project. No wonder the engineers were so excited. The robotics could function even when the living body was unconscious? An army of soldiers like this would be the most deadly spies on the planet.

"I want to help," she whispered. "But I don't know what to do."

"They plan to begin dissection tonight," not-Shadow whispered. "There's not much time left."

Dissection! Dina pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a cry. This sculpted body, flesh and metal, would be cut open like a fish at the market. "I've got to do something!"

"The chaos emerald," not-Shadow whispered. "Where is it?"

"In my pocket," Dina replied.

The metal hand shifted, turning palm-upward under the restraining band. "I have a little strength left. Hand it to me, then extract the IV."

With a worried glance at the door, Dina slipped the fiery orange gem from her vest pocket and placed it in his hand. The metal fingers curled around the gem, gripping it tightly.

Shadow inhaled deeply, his head rolling from side to side. "The IV, quick."

Dina circled the bed and looked at the plastic tube feeding into his wrist, secured by layers of adhesive tape. She ripped the tape off and carefully pulled the needle out of the vein. It bled, of course. She snatched up a wad of gauze from a nearby table and taped it over the wound.

"Dina," Shadow murmured. His living eye had opened a crack. He beckoned with the fingers on his living hand.

She grasped his hand and stooped over him. "Yes?"

He whispered in her ear, "Chaos control."


	5. Chapter 5: Trackers

A hot rush of chaos energy surged from Shadow's hand and through Dina's body. It burned through her spine, hips and legs in a wave of crippling pain. She gasped, preparing to scream-

The world shifted and rearranged itself. The hospital room and bed disappeared. Shadow fell onto leaves and lay there, groaning, still gripping her hand. Dina knelt beside him, the pain subsiding from her robotic implants in pins and needles. "What happened?"

The electronic eye fixed on her. "I have the power to teleport when touching a chaos emerald. Ugh. Where are we?"

Dina stood and walked in a circle, scanning the countryside. "I think we're out near the army base. You moved us about five miles. That's great!"

"No, not great." Shadow struggled to prop himself up on his elbows. "You have a tracking device. They'll find you." He exhaled and sank back to the leaves.

Dina rushed back to him, her mind awhirl with escape plans. "We could get away! I could steal a car or something!"

He smiled and rested a hand on her metal leg. "Why do you need to drive when you have these?"

She placed her hand over his. "You're too drugged to move, Shadow. I can't carry you."

"Healing nanites. Working on it." He struggled to sit up, and Dina helped him. He hunched over, holding his knees. His body was damp with sweat, and he sneezed.

"Are you sick?"

He shook his head. "I'm about to have a week's worth of morphine withdrawal packed into a couple of hours." He struggled grimly to all fours. "We've got to get moving."

Dina helped him up, then supported him as they set out across the hillside. "Some race this is."

"I'll get stronger." Shadow could barely hold up his head. He clung to her arm and shoulder, his legs wobbling. "We've got to have a longer lead. And I'm not strong enough for another chaos control." He dragged her to a halt and retched. Nothing came up.

"They never fed you?" Dina asked, horrified.

Shadow straightened, looking green. "They were going to cut me up tonight. The specialists were supposed to all arrive to mine my secrets. They don't feed you before surgery. And now I've got this blasted withdrawal to deal with."

They hobbled on. Shadow gradually grew strong enough to walk on his own, although he shivered, sweated, and sometimes fell when a dizzy spell overtook him. They increased their pace to a light jog.

"I did this to you," Dina said sorrowfully. "I turned you in."

"They were going to shoot me," Shadow replied. "You did what you had to do. Quick thinking, by the way."

"Thanks." She smiled, and found him smiling back. "I've felt horribly guilty."

"Well, you got me out," Shadow said. "And now we've got to try to escape the country before they catch us."

"Can't you just teleport us?"

"Yeah. Hold on." He stopped and rested his hands on his knees, panting. After a moment's rest, he took her hand again. "Chaos control."

The world shifted to a hillside with rocky outcroppings every few feet. A town lay in a narrow valley a few miles away.

"Blast," Shadow muttered, looking around. "It's these drugs. I can only move a few miles at a time."

Again, pain burned through Dina's back and legs. She stamped her feet and cursed.

"Sorry about that," Shadow said. "Chaos power disrupts machinery. I've got to get you some chaos shielding."

They hurried onward, climbing the hill and weaving through the rocks.

"The border is about twenty miles north of here," Shadow said. "That's Springdale down there. I can teleport once every fifteen minutes." He staggered and caught himself against a boulder, breathing hard.

Dina steadied him. "You're doing great! You should still be unconscious."

He grinned. "I'm hard to drug. The nanites constantly purge poisons from my bloodstream. It's why I'm sick like this."

They hurried on. Shadow seemed strong sometimes, and other times he had to sit and rest, shaking so hard that Dina held him to keep him from hurting himself. During these times, he pressed the chaos emerald to his chest and hugged it, as if drawing extra healing from its power.

As they reached the hilltop, Shadow panted, "What are we going to do about the bomb in your spine?"

Dina had been trying very hard not to think about that. "It hasn't gone off yet, so ..."

"Here, let me see it."

She showed him her scarred back. He ran his fingers down her backbone until he located the sinister lump under her skin. He gazed at it for a long moment.

"What do you think?" Dina said over her shoulder.

"I'm scanning it with my robot eye," he replied. "It doesn't look like a bomb. There's an extra chip and a wire, but there's no explosive compounds. You're sure that's what it is?"

"They said there was a bomb in my spine." Dina shook her head, bewildered. "Do you think they lied?"

Shadow prodded the lump. "Maybe there's more inside the spine itself. Let me do a deeper scan."

As Dina stood there, worried and half-cringing at the idea of something worse than a bomb stuck in her back, she gazed across the valley behind them. The town of Springdale was quiet and peaceful, with a few cars traveling its roads. As she watched, a helicopter rose from the far end of town and flew toward them. A black, long-bodied helicopter.

"Shadow," Dina said, "is that helicopter coming here?"

He straightened and shaded his eyes from the sinking sun. He sucked in his breath through his teeth. "GUN's tracked you. Blast."

"Can we teleport?" Dina murmured, as if the approaching aircraft might overhear.

Shadow shook his head. "It's only been about ten minutes. We'll have to run. Look for cover."

Dina took his arm and they broke into a run across the hilltop and down the other side. Shadow ran badly, his feet tripping over each other, clinging to Dina with one hand and the orange gem with the other.

"They're tracking me," Dina whispered as they ran headlong downhill. "We can't escape, because I've got the tracker. Can you pull it out?"

"It's wrapped around your vertebrae," Shadow panted. "I can't just yank it out."

The helicopter swept over the hilltop above them, its rotors chopping the air. Dina glanced back and saw two men in black uniforms gazing down at them. The helicopter swung around and flew after them, the wind from its rotors lashing the dry grass around them.

"Stop," Shadow commanded. "Stand still."

Dina obeyed, heart pounding, still supporting the black hedgehog. He straightened beside her, gripping her hand, facing the helicopter.

The aircraft hovered above the hillside, its chain guns trained on them. A voice blared from its loudspeaker. "Shadow and Dina, we have you in our sights. Surrender now!"

"Don't move," Shadow said.

Dina kept her arms at her sides, panic rippling through her. Her legs itched to run.

"Dina," the agent on the loudspeaker said, "if you continue to run, we will have no choice but to detonate the bomb in your spine."

Dina squeaked, gulping back a scream. The wind from the helicopter whipped tears into her eyes - or maybe her terror had reached the stage of crying.

Shadow raised one hand in a crude gesture.

"Right," the loudspeaker replied. "Then you leave us no choice."

Dina grabbed Shadow and dashed downhill with him as the helicopter opened fire, bullets tearing chunks out of the earth and grass.

Several things happened at once.

Something clicked in Dina's spine. It rattled her whole skeleton and her vision blurred. Her legs gave out instantly. She fell, dragging Shadow with her.

Shadow yelled, "Chaos control!"

The world shifted. The bare hillside became a forest of trees blazing with fall color, red and yellow leaves carpeting the ground. Dina crashed into them and lay there, panting and half-sobbing.

Shadow spat an expletive and knelt over her. "What happened? Are you shot?"

"My back," she whispered, turning her head. "The bomb. I can't move my legs." It felt like they were gone. From the waist down was nothing at all. She might as well have been chopped in half.

She felt his hand trail down her back to the spot where the lump had been. Below that point, sensation ceased.

"It was a kill switch, not a bomb," Shadow muttered. "The lump has collapsed. It's cut your spinal cord or something. I guess they wanted to retrieve you if you ran."

Dina rested her head on her arms and stared at the leaves beneath her. "So ... that's it, then. End of the race. I lay here until they track me down."

"I don't think so," Shadow growled. "Not after we've come this far. Can you feel this?"

Dina vaguely felt the vibration through her insides as he tapped the bomb-spot on her back. "No. It's dead."

"Good. I'm going to cut the tracker's wire."

She felt a little pressure as he dug the tip of one robot finger into her skin, but that was all. She squeezed her eyes closed.

After a moment there was a ping of metal breaking. "Got it," he reported. "Now, I've got to get you some help."

"Shadow," Dina said, as he helped her sit up, "you might as well just leave me."

He sat beside her with a sigh. "Why do you say that?"

"Because ..." Dina ran one finger along a seam in her mechanical thigh. "I'm back to being a cripple. You're so sweet to me, I can't bear being a burden to you."

"Dina," Shadow said, "I just destroyed your tracking device. GUN will have no idea where you are. You're telling me to just abandon you out in the woods like this? With your legs broken? What kind of monster do you think I am?"

She gazed at him. His natural eye stared into hers with passionate intensity. His hand tightened on hers. "I offered you freedom. We're sitting on the edge right now. Do you want to be free? Or a GUN slave?"

"I wish I could be free," she replied sadly. "But if my spine is severed, I'm crippled. I might as well go back and see if they can repair me."

His mouth curled into a smile. "What if I took you to the scientist who augmented me?"

Dina lifted her head, eyes widening. "What?"

"Yeah, he's a renegade," Shadow said, continuing to grin. "GUN wants his tech in the worse way. He's years ahead of them in his research. I'm sure he could fix your back."

That was a completely new set of concerns. She pressed a hand to her cheek. "But ... I don't have any money. Would he do all that work for free?"

Shadow laughed. "You don't know him. You'll be a fascinating puzzle for him. Come on, let me carry you."

Shadow hoisted Dina off her feet, grunting under her healthy weight. "Okay," he said, "we're going to make several short hops. Chaos control!"


	6. Chapter 6: Healing

Shadow took Dina back to the underground lab in the mountains where he had undergone his augmentation process. Still sick from drug withdrawal, the effort of multiple teleports taxed his strength. It was pure relief to arrive in the entry room of the lab. The lighting was dim to save power, and floor and walls were cold concrete.

"Is this the place?" Dina said, her arm around his neck tightening a little.

"Mecha!" Shadow called, his voice echoing down the hall. "A little help!" He leaned against the wall rather than drop Dina.

She looked into his face, her nose an inch from his. "You're shaking again."

"I can manage," he muttered. She was so close. He wanted to kiss her lips, caress her face, express the warm, bursting feeling in his heart.

Footsteps approached down the hall. They both looked up to see Mecha slow to a halt and stand staring.

Once, he had been Metal Sonic, an assassin robot feared by everyone in West Mobius. But over time, he had built and transferred himself into a body that resembled a living hedgehog's. He was a deep blue color, but the whites of his eyes remained black, with red irises.

Dina gasped and tensed in Shadow's arms.

"Don't be afraid," he whispered. "Mecha's trustworthy."

"Shadow," the android said, pacing toward them slowly. "Who is this?"

"This is Dina," Shadow said, meeting the gaze of his old master. "She was created by GUN to destroy me. When she tried to escape, they set off a kill switch in her spine that left her crippled."

Mecha's red eyes swept Dina's body, scanning. "Fascinating! Your spine and lower body are completely robotic. For extra speed, I assume?"

Dina swallowed and nodded.

Mecha held out his arms. "Pass her to me, Shadow. I will care for her."

Shadow did so, clumsily, and collapsed to the floor afterward.

"Morphine withdrawal," Dina explained. "They had him on an IV when I rescued him."

"Hm," Mecha said, looking into Dina's face, then at Shadow on the floor. "I sense quite a story behind this."

Shadow connected the computer in his head to Mecha's personal wireless network. Through this network, he said, "We barely escaped. Tend to her. I destroyed a tracking device in her back, but there may be others."

"Have you chosen her as a mate?" Mecha said through the network.

"Yes." Shadow couldn't keep himself from smiling. "She hasn't quite agreed yet, so don't say anything."

"Affirmative." Mecha turned carefully, avoiding scraping Dina's feet on the wall. "I'm proud of you, Shadow. You are moving on with your life."

Shadow didn't reply. This was high praise, coming from Mecha. Slowly he climbed to his feet and followed the android toward the main operating room.

Inside, Mecha laid Dina on a bed in a staging theater, under a cluster of bright lights. Tanks of oxygen stood nearby, as well as racks of mysterious mechanical parts and tools. Dina looked at it in terror. "Are you going to cut me up now?"

"No," Mecha replied. "I must do a complete scan to discover what they've done to you. I will ask you many questions. First. Are you loyal to GUN?"

"No!" Dina exclaimed, meeting Shadow's eyes as the hedgehog fell into a chair. "I'm loyal to Shadow. He helped me, and I ... I wasn't so helpful."

"You did what you had to do," Shadow growled. "Don't beat yourself up."

Mecha's curiosity was palpable. But he restrained himself, scanning with the tech built into his eyes, and with various instruments that he passed up and down Dina's body.

Shadow found himself shaking again as another bad spell set in. He folded his arms tightly and clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering.

Mecha noticed. "As much as I appreciate your devotion, your presence is not required. Go. Rest."

"I want to stay with her," Shadow said.

Mecha studied him for a moment. Then he quietly left the room.

"Is he your friend?" Dina asked. "You two seem to know each other so well."

"He's more like my father," Shadow replied. "You know. Bossy. Overbearing. Concerned about my well-being. Pushing me to get a real job."

She grinned. "Threatening to stop your allowance?"

Shadow nodded. "That, too."

Mecha returned, carrying a tattered mattress. He dropped it on the floor beside the staging theater. He pointed at it. Shadow slid out of his chair and curled up on the mattress. It was stupidly comfortable.

"Now, rest," Mecha said severely. "The nanites will be taxing your body's resources. By the time the drug is expelled, you will be very weak. When you awaken, you must eat."

"Yes, Dad," Shadow said sarcastically.

Mecha chuckled and returned to examining Dina.

"You are like his dad," she murmured. "Exactly."

"Someone has to be," Mecha muttered. "You rest, too. This will take another two hours."

Dina dozed on the high bed, and Shadow slept on the low bed. Mecha watched over them both, wondering.

* * *

Dina awoke some time later to the sound of hushed voices talking. Small, high-pitched voices.

She turned her head and saw two chao gazing at her from a foot away. One was black with gold stripes in its hedgehog-like spikes. The other was metallic blue, with red eyes. It was easy to guess who they belonged to.

"Did Shadow make her?" the blue female was asking, her eyes wide in awe as she stared at Dina's legs.

"Found her somewhere, I'll bet," the black chao said in a more masculine voice. "Look at what a funny color she is. Oh, look, she's awake."

The chao stared avidly at Dina. She stared back with a smile. She loved chao and used to visit the Sapphire City chao gardens before her accident.

"Hi there," she said. "I'm Dina. Who are you?"

"I'm Aleda and this is Nox," said the blue female. "We've been waiting for Shadow to come back, and he brought you! Are you his girlfriend?"

Heat rose in Dina's cheeks. "Well, I ... I don't know."

Nox gave her a knowing look, almost as if he sensed her embarrassment.

Aleda was oblivious. "Well, I hope you are, because I'm the only girl around here and it's tiring. Are you a princess? Did he rescue you from a castle?"

Dina tried to hide a smile, unsuccessfully. "Actually ... he kind of did." She propped herself up on one elbow, but dared move no further. Without feeling in her legs, it would be easy to overbalance and topple onto the concrete.

"Hey, be careful."

Shadow shot off his mattress, where he had been curled, and leaped to the bed where Dina lay. He then had to lean his elbows on it and bow his head as lightheadedness threatened to make him pass out. Dina lay back and curled her fingers around his metal hand. It was warm again.

"Oh my," Nox said. The black chao put his paws over his mouth and giggled.

"What?" Aleda demanded.

"They're in _love_ ," Nox stage-whispered.

"Nox," Shadow said, lifting his head with a deadly scowl. "Shut the heck up." Before Dina could ask, he added, "Nox has the power to sense emotions."

"Oh, you're an empath," Dina said. "My mom could do that. Don't embarrass Shadow, please. He's been through so much already."

Nox's smile vanished. "Why? What's he been through?"

Shadow launched into the story with a glance at the open doorway. It was such a long story that he had to sit on the mattress again to keep his knees from buckling. Nox and Aleda listened, enraptured.

Mecha entered the room as Shadow completed his narrative. The android carried a bowl of soup in either hand. One he handed to Shadow. The other was for Dina, after he adjusted her bed to sit up, like a chair.

"Thank you," she told the hedgehog-like creature. She held out a hand to him without knowing why.

Mecha took her hand and gazed at her for a long moment. Something in his expression softened, and for a moment he looked almost tender. His hand was warm, too.

"You fought your programming," he said quietly. "Your desire to protect Shadow was so strong. For that alone, I owe you any amount of medical assistance."

Mecha released her hand and looked at Shadow, who had already gulped his soup and was holding his empty bowl, looking hopeful.

"Shadow," Mecha said in a much harsher tone, "why did you not notify me that you had not eaten in seven days?"

"I was preoccupied with being horribly sick," Shadow snapped. "Is there more soup?"

Mecha nodded. "Have you the strength to fetch it yourself?"

Shadow rose to his feet, took a couple of experimental steps, nearly fell, and caught himself against the wall. "Uh, not yet."

Mecha silently retrieved another bowl of soup, then a third.

Dina watched this in wondering silence. Shadow and Mecha bickered like old friends who knew each other well. Yet Mecha had treated her completely differently, with respect and care. He also ignored the chao. Mecha must have learned something from his scans that he was waiting to tell them.

Sure enough, once their appetites were satisfied, Mecha faced them both. Nox and Aleda watched him, interested.

"My scans revealed that Dina's spinal cord has been cut by the device wired to her vertebrae. Moreover, there is another device in her ribcage of dubious operation. I will not be certain what it is until I remove it, but I believe it is an explosive device."

Dina gasped.

"They meant to kill her, after all," Shadow growled.

Mecha inclined his head. "That is the most obvious conclusion. I am capable of removing it with a small incision. However, the spinal break is gravely serious. The only way I can attempt to repair it is with nanites. Even nanites have only a thirty-nine percent chance of success. Therefore." He turned to Dina. "Do you give me permission to inject twenty milligrams of regeneration nanites into your bloodstream?"

Dina glanced at Shadow. "Is that what you have?"

Shadow cracked a smile. "I have a lot more than twenty milligrams, but yes. Same machines."

Dina drew a deep breath. This was where Shadow's black market augmentation had come from - this genius android who had treated them so kindly. She looked into Mecha's glowing red eyes. "Do whatever it takes. For Shadow's sake."

Mecha closed his eyes for a long moment. "If you only knew the things I've done for Shadow's sake." He opened his eyes. "Right, then. Chao, please leave the room. Shadow, if you have any strength at all, I shall need your assistance. And Dina, do you have any drug allergies?"

Dina found herself accepting more injections, more sensors taped her head and torso, more of everything she had experienced at the hands of GUN. But this time, it was emergency surgery to try to correct the injuries inflicted by GUN. She was simply so tired of needles.

Mecha used only local anesthetic to remove the explosive device. Dina lay on her side, gazing at the wall, listening to Shadow and Mecha's voices as they cut into her and unwound the device from her lowest rib. She hadn't even known it was there. How many other things had GUN changed inside her that she was completely unaware of?

"Got it," Shadow announced. He showed it to Dina as Mecha sewed her up. It was a little gray square, the size of a fingernail, with a microchip attached. A few wires trailed from it.

"C4," Shadow said, pointing at the gray square. "And a remote detonator. This would have blown your heart right out of your body."

Dina didn't say anything, merely took Shadow's hand and held it. He gazed at her with his mismatched eyes, deeply compassionate.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "For everything you've had to go through."

"You helped me," she whispered in response. "You didn't have to."

He smoothed a stray quill away from her face. "You deserve so much better than what they were doing to you. I'm glad I found you when I did. I wondered, maybe ... if you might ..."

"Shadow," Mecha interrupted, "now is not the time to propose marriage. Wait until she's well."

Shadow's muzzle flushed bright red. Dina's own face grew hot. That had been exactly what he was going to say, all right.

"How?" she asked Shadow. "Where would we live?"

Shadow cast a sidelong look at Mecha. "Well, we'll have to live here for a while. But I also have four or five outstanding job offers from the New Mobitropolis military. They want me to train people in chaos powers, or do missions for them as a contractor, or all kinds of things. I was too obsessed with GUN to take them up on it, but now ..."

"I could live in New Mobitropolis," Dina said thoughtfully. "Maybe you and I could operate as a team."

Shadow smiled. "I'd like that."

Mecha walked around the table and fetched a syringe from a cooler. It was full of a shiny silver substance. He showed it to Dina. "These are the nanites I'm about to inject into your bloodstream. I shall guide them to your spine and instruct them to rebuild the nerve connections. There may be pain, possibly excruciating amounts. Are you prepared?"

Dina drew a shaky breath, looking from Mecha to Shadow. "I've got to walk again ... so ... do it."

* * *

The pain was awful at first. Dina sobbed helplessly, lying on her stomach on the bed, as pain burned through her lower back, centered around the break. Shadow stood by helplessly, waiting for Mecha to tell him to give her sleeping drugs.

But Mecha needed her awake to gauge the progress of the healing, and pain medication would divert nanites to the brain, where they would attempt to purge the drug. So Dina endured two hours of agony.

After two hours, however, the fiery burning settled into a dull throbbing. Mecha gave a satisfied sigh. "The nanites are repairing the breach with minimal error. You may begin feeling tingling sensations in your lower body at any time."

Dina lay there, gazing at Shadow, who sat in a chair and leaned his head against her arm, watching her woefully.

"This is the last time you have to suffer," the black hedgehog told her. "Never again."

"Never again," she whispered, stroking his face. "And neither will you."

He smiled.

Mecha tapped the bottom of her left foot, then her right. "Dina, do you feel anything?"

"My left foot," she said, eyes widening. "Just for a second, I felt the vibration."

"Good," Mecha said.

Over the rest of the day, sensation slowly returned to Dina's mechanical legs. The nerves burned and itched as connections were reestablished, but it was no worse than when GUN had installed the legs in the first place.

Still, Dina wasn't allowed to move until Mecha pronounced her spinal cord completely out of danger. She spent the night on the hospital bed. Shadow leaned his head and shoulders on the bed and slept beside her until she coaxed him into returning to his mattress, where it was more comfortable. Then she lay there, staring into the darkness, imagining a future for them together. A bright, friendly future, like all their long walks and conversations in the park. Shadow had issues, sure. His past had been filled with all kinds of solitary anguish. But so had hers. Maybe, together, they could help each other to heal.

* * *

A month later, Shadow and Dina traveled to New Mobitropolis via chaos control. And who should happen to be standing there as they appeared but Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic was talking to his friend Tails on the sidewalk across the street. As Shadow and Dina appeared, the blue hedgehog whirled around, startled. Then he stared at them, his mouth falling open.

"Hey, that's Sonic!" Dina said.

"Ignore him," Shadow muttered, tugging at her arm.

But Dina, unaware of the animosity between the two, waved. Sonic took this as an invitation to dart across the street. "Hey, Shads! Long time, no see! And who's this pretty lady?"

Shadow clenched his teeth and didn't answer.

Dina said, "I'm Dina Marsden. Nice to meet you, Sonic!" She shook hands with him, excited to finally meet such a celebrity.

"So," Sonic said, drawing it out into a question. "What's the scoop? Are you two, like, together? Like, _together_ together?"

Shadow gave Sonic his most condescending look. "We're here to buy a ring, hedgehog. What's that tell you?"

Sonic laughed, a huge, astonished laugh. "Who'd have thought you'd have a girl fall for you? Dina, you're okay with the whole Mekion thing, right?"

Dina pointed at her mechanical legs.

"Right, right," Sonic said, still grinning. "I want to know the whole story behind this."

"Later, hedgehog," Shadow said repressively. He tugged Dina's arm and whispered, "Run."

He and Dina raced away down the street, kicking up a wind in their wake that swirled dust and leaves into the air.

Sonic stared after them, eyes wide. "Well Shads, looks like she fits you. I should have know you'd be attracted to fast women."

The end


End file.
